Work

Authenticity is key

When Penfield approached us asking to help them to reconnect with the youth market, for us it was a no brainer – if you're gonna do it, do it properly or don't do it at all.

Working with renowned youth culture photographer Vicky Grout and stylist Hayley McCarthy we took the SS17 Penfield collection and embodied the clear cultural references that the design team at Penfield had been inspired by. Clean tracksuits and bold colour palettes were set against a London backdrop that wasn't cliché or unreachable. If this collection was to communicate to the target audience, the images had to be empowering while also having an everyday honesty.

Sneakers. Collecting. Culture.

CREPE CITY is Europe's largest sneaker festival. With a dedicated following attending their every event in the UK, as well as a vast online fan base that exceeds 300k.t

CREPE CITY Magazine serves a set of purposes – to take the CREPE CITY brand name beyond its current circles, to educate the current audience on the histories and stories behind the sneakers and brands that they love, and to give brands a new means to market to that audience in a way that goes deeper and lasts longer than social media.

Through studying CREPE CITY as an event and community we distilled its core values of sneakers, collecting, and culture, placing them at the very heart of this project. Issue 03 sees the magazine continue to develop and grow, with the most substantial changes to date, both in the magazine and behind the scenes. One thing remains the same: to explore the cultures surrounding sneaker collecting through high quality long-form content.

A New Design Language

We went back to the drawing board for issue 03, looking to further distill what made the first 2 issues so good. Less is more, so we stripped out whole sections of content, including the sections themselves, and opted for amore fluid approach that gave a more natural and comfortable flow to the magazine.

A new larger format allowed our beautiful content to shine, as well as giving the magazine more presence on the news-stand and a more comfortable reading experience.

We partnered with one of the UK's most exciting type foundries, Colophon Foundry, working closely together to bring a considered selection of their typefaces to the magazine.

Content Content Content

At the end of the day, what is a good magazine if not for it's content? We love good design, but it's wasted if it's not supporting exceptional content and issue 03 was no exception, continuing to work with a selection of incredible talent.

When character talks for itself

When approaching the creative direction for this shoot we found ourselves running though a long list of potential story-lead ideas, but as soon as the product arrived, it was clear what we needed to do: with such a strong personality already, we decided to strip away the creative and let the shoes speak for themselves.

The addition of a textured background kept a loose focus on texture, one of the main ingredients to this pack, without stealing attention from the shoes themselves.

We enlisted the skilled eye of Constance Victoria Phillips to bring the shoot to life.

Crop it real good

Destined for online and social media, and with a bold use of texture and colour, a lot of power in these images comes from tight crops. Again, this was done to put an emphasis on the materials in use over the iconic silhouettes that the majority of consumers are well acquainted with.

Sneakers. Collecting. Culture.

CREPE CITY is Europe's largest sneaker festival. With a dedicated following attending their every event in the UK, as well as an ever-growing online fan base that exceeds 300k, how could they expand further?

CREPE CITY Magazine serves a set of purposes – to take the CREPE CITY brand name beyond its current circles, to educate the current audience on the histories and stories behind the sneakers and brands they love, and to give brands a new means to market to that audience in a way that goes deeper and lasts longer than social media.

Through studying CREPE CITY as an event and community we distilled its core values of sneakers, collecting, and culture, placing them at the very heart of this project as the three sections of the magazine.

Issue 02 sees the magazine develop into full artwork covers, putting to use the same grained textured used on issue 01, while also adding an embossed logo that is finished with a spot UV.

A new standard.

The sneaker world needed shaking up. Independent publishing is flourishing and bringing a new level of quality to magazines, especially in fashion and lifestyle. CREPE CITY Magazine brings those qualities to the sneaker community, setting a new standard in a market that hasn't seen substantial change in publishing for decades.

Designed for a modern reader.

The social media generation have a hunger for information and premium imagery. Instagram fulfils this hunger almost entirely on its own, but that doesn't mean that this generation are only interested in super short-form content via their mobile.

With our content being predominantly long-form, the design and layout of CREPE CITY Magazine had to be unthreatening without belittling its audience. Wise use of white space and larger type ensure that the reading experience is one of comfort, while spreading content over a substantial amount of pages ensured we positioned ourselves as far as possible from the usual cramped design of sneaker magazines that breeds a feeling of chaos.

We know that this audience enjoys long-form content. We also know that they don't want it to feel like a labour to read it.

A timeless reference tool.

One of our main priorities with CREPE CITY Magazine is to position it outside of the fast paced world of online news. To take advantage of the physicality and permanence of a well produced magazine we ensured the content is as interesting to read in 5 years as it is now.

Taking this concept a step further, we created Archive. Found at the heart of each issue, Archive shines a light on one collector's personal highlights from their own collection, displaying roughly 50 pairs in an encyclopaedic fashion and printed on highly textural off-white uncoated paper stock to give it that book feel. You'll find nothing but archival photography and key information in this homage to the geekiness of sneaker collecting.

Futurism meets Industrialism.

When Nike approached us to create an alternate still life set of images for their NikeLab ACG Ho15 collection, we were instantly inspired. With such a strong back-story and a clear new vision, we set out to distil the core values of both this new collection and the recently relaunched ACG brand as a whole, using this as the foundations for our creative direction.

Inspired by the city.

For us, the path was clear – take those core elements and re-approach them. We wanted a set that would embody the core values of the city we love, London, using a selection of the raw materials that are used to create it, some memorable, some seemingly alien. Amongst the materials we placed a selection of shapes, created to reference the cutting, unrelenting shapes found in Brutalist architecture.

If this collection was inspired by the urban landscape, we wanted to ensure that we took the same inspirations, but in a different direction. It was important that the final images made sense within the ACG brand, but were far removed from the visuals that Nike had already created.

Details for details.

For a sub-brand that obsesses over details, it was important to us that a selection of the visuals really amplified this story. Whether it was the GOR-TEX® materials, the 3M outer-branding, or the hidden details within, we ensured that these key elements were brought to life through the use of detailed close-up photography.

Sneakers. Collecting. Culture.

CREPE CITY is Europe's largest sneaker festival. With a dedicated following attending their every event in the UK, as well as an ever-growing online fan base that exceeds 300k, how could they expand further?

CREPE CITY Magazine serves a set of purposes – to take the CREPE CITY brand name beyond its current circles, to educate the current audience on the histories and stories behind the sneakers and brands they love, and to give brands a new means to market to that audience in a way that goes deeper and lasts longer than social media.

Through studying CREPE CITY as an event and community we distilled its core values of sneakers, collecting, and culture, placing them at the very heart of this project as the three sections of the magazine.

A new standard.

The sneaker world needed shaking up. Independent publishing is flourishing and bringing a new level of quality to magazines, especially in fashion and lifestyle. CREPE CITY Magazine brings those qualities to the sneaker community, setting a new standard in a market that hasn't seen substantial change in publishing for decades.

Designed for a modern reader.

The social media generation have a hunger for information and premium imagery. Instagram fulfils this hunger almost entirely on its own, but that doesn't mean that this generation are only interested in super short-form content via their mobile.

With our content being predominantly long-form, the design and layout of CREPE CITY Magazine had to be unthreatening without belittling its audience. Wise use of white space and larger type ensure that the reading experience is one of comfort, while spreading content over a substantial amount of pages ensured we positioned ourselves as far as possible from the usual cramped design of sneaker magazines that breeds a feeling of chaos.

We know that this audience enjoys long-form content. We also know that they don't want it to feel like a labour to read it.

A timeless reference tool.

One of our main priorities with CREPE CITY Magazine was to position it outside of the fast paced world of online news. To take advantage of the physicality and permanence of a well produced magazine we ensured the content is as interesting to read in 5 years as it is now.

Taking this concept a step further, we created Archive. Found at the heart of each issue, Archive shines a light on one collector's personal highlights from their own collection, displaying roughly 40 pairs in an encyclopaedic fashion. You'll find nothing but archival photography and key information in this homage to the geekiness of sneaker collecting.

The CREPE CITY audience has a passion for collecting sneakers and we wanted to ensure the magazine became a part of that passion for collecting.

Core brand values, printed.

We worked alongside comm•une to create a magazine for Dimensions Festival that embodied and expanded on the brand ideals and the initial mentality behind their beloved branding.

Utilising the same concepts that inspired the design of the original logo by Two Times Elliot, we broke the logo into its various elements and blew them out of proportion, allowing them to interact with the content in an organic way that gives the feel of dimensions throughout the layout.

Minimal and punchy.

To further embody the aesthetic of Dimensions Festival and its appeal to their audience, we reduced the colour palette to a few select colours inspired by the lighting found at the festival. Dominant use of the brand colour, crimson, ensured a strong connection to the Dimensions Festival brand and ideals throughout.

To further strengthen the identity of Dimensions Annual we opted for all images to be black and white. With current trends in photography associating black and white with quality and maturity, we felt this fit the target audience of Dimensions Festival perfectly. The removal of colour also encouraged the reader to bring the photos to life themselves, tying them into the experience within the photos rather than showing them someone else's experience.

Designed with budget in mind.

By utilising the minimal art direction and expanding its ideals into the print production we were able to vastly reduce print costs for this project. Tactful use of various printing techniques including two-colour sections within the magazine and a single-colour cover enabled us to keep costs low without sacrificing reading experience.

Themed, but in unison.

When PUMA approached us to create their SS14 lookbook they were clear that they wanted defined themes for each capsule collection. The collections had strong stories of inspiration, seemingly unattached to each other. We worked with the brand to find the thread that connected the entire season, ensuring that each theme had its own identity while sharing a distinct aesthetic across the entire lookbook.

Old meets new.

Spring/Summer 2014 saw a large trend for 1990s and retro aesthetics and we wanted to reflect that through every element of the lookbook, from photography and model poses to design. With a lot of brands attempting to replicate the retro look simply with styling, failing to execute on the details, we shot on a professional film camera from 1994 to ensure the shots looked of the era they were referencing and briefed the models with mood boards that referenced poses from iconic campaigns and sports catalogues of the time. Colour fades were added manually on set using gels rather than in post production to add to the retro theme while giving it a more contemporary edge.

An obsession for details.

We love details. Pulling references from iconic 1990s advertising and archival PUMA running catalogues and adverts we got inspired and saturated that inspiration into every detail from the layout to typography to copy writing to logos. We even reproduced vintage PUMA catalogue images with the current product. It would be fair to say that we obsessed.

The finishing touch.

How can you create a lookbook that obsesses over the pre-digital era without making it physical? You shouldn't really, so we didn't. Turned around at an unbelievable speed, we designed and printed the lookbook on premium uncoated paper stock ready for the SS14 PUMA press day.

Loud and clear.

Vauxhall tasked us with creating a set of images that would help them to place their Monza concept car in design and lifestyle publications. With a design so striking, we kept things simple and bold, allowing the car itself to take centre stage.

Shot in a film studio, the use of lighting kept within the frames tapped into the current trends of vintage studio lighting in interior design. A lack of colour on set brought the subtle grey tones of the Monza to life and referenced the class and visual power associated with black & white photography.

Visual storytelling.

adidas Originals tasked us with creating a series of content for the JD Sports social channels. We worked closely with their PR agency John Doe to select which products should be selected each season and what stories should be told through the images – from Back To School to Summer Refreshment to referencing the historical past of specific sneakers.

The images proved a huge success, becoming some of the most liked content on the JD Sports Instagram account.

Rooted in history.

With a collection that drew direct inspiration from a specific historical moment, we wanted to ensure the visuals referenced that same era. Revisiting the first year that adidas sponsored Team GB, 1984, the collection came very close to replicating archive pieces from that momentous occasion.

To weave this story through the visual assets, we worked closely with film photography specialist Dan Douglass, shooting on an 35mm camera from the mid-80s and using a 35mm film that replicated the hues and contrast of the time that the collection referenced.

Modern juxtaposition.

To counter the vintage aesthetics of the visuals, we shot on location in Stratford, amongst the giant building site for the London 2012 Olympics, adding a modern sub-story and giving the images relevance to today.

Our platform.

Where our journey started. THE DAILY STREET launched in its initial form in late 2009, just before the boom of UK fashion blogs. Pioneering in its simple approach, THE DAILY STREET originated as a UK only streetwear blog.

Today, THE DAILY STREET stands as a UK staple. Having expanded its content beyond streetwear to encapsulate all that influences and is influenced by streetwear and sneaker culture, THE DAILY STREET continues to look to develop and progress as the landscape shifts around it.

Our content.

Rooted in an honest and knowledgeable approach, we believe that the key to good content that connects with an audience is to first connect with the people within the content itself. To allow that human connection to shine through in all its organic glory. Over the years, it's that that we've learned gives content the special something you can't quite put your finger on.

For THE DAILY STREET, our approach aims to always sit comfortably outside of the expected, but not too far to alienate people. THE DAILY STREET has never seen itself as above its audience, but it doesn't underestimate its audiences intellect and hunger for quality either. The same statement holds true today as much as it did right at the beginning of our journey – THE DAILY STREET should feel like your well informed and trusted friend.